SAFETY PINS FOR HISTORY by Marina Griznic

I would like to start with an ending.

Emma Hedditch's text for Metamute LOCATIVE FEMINISM (See http://linkme2.net/59) where she gives a critical but substantial review of the New Feminism/New Europe project (titled PROLOGUE, presented in ESC Graz in May 2005, and developed further at Cornerhouse, Manchester in August 2005) - as a mutating platform for the formulation of a feminist aesthetic politics, which reacts to and acts upon the New Europe - ends with a resume of some of my points from the panel discussion that was part of the Manchester presentation: Feminist politics that will embrace radical democracy is that which will display - in texts and critical writings as well as in works of art - operations that hide the social antagonism. This means also a return to the idea of articulating forms of life and modes of making art that also lead up to questioning the system of liberal democracy, as well as to articulating the meaning of this today, the conditions of being a sexed subject. A shift is needed from understanding to a radical critique of domination, injustice and inequality. To my mind, these topics and these fields set clear limits within rationalist and universalistic discourses in Europe.

Hedditch ends where I want to continue by putting forward additional aspects that will help in rearticulating the social, theoretical and political situation at the present moment. I will draw therefore further on the points developed by Ewa Plonowska Ziarek in her book An Ethics of Dissenus. Posmodernity, Feminism, and the Politics of Radical Democracy. Ziarek argues that the social antagonism has to be questioned also through unwrapping the safely wrapped-up history of feminism that excludes all the other worlds except the First Capitalist World. It may be possible to state, as bell hooks (quoted by Ziarek) pointed out, that the feminist politics of difference and responsibility for the other has failed to articulate alternative models of inter-/intrasubjective and political relations.

Because of globalisation and because of activities established against it, new powerful feminist actors and agents became visible: American Black feminists, African feminists, the Asian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean groups and the former Eastern European feminists, etc. The ex- Yugoslav space has a powerful and long tradition, especially in Belgrade and Zagreb. On the other hand the cyber feminist movement and the queer movement are able critically to rethink a proper position in the field. This is what is happening in Ljubljana, where the gay and lesbian movements stress questions of inequality and human rights, marginality and segregation (as it is the case in precise writings by Nataša Velikonja, Tatjana Greif, Suzana Tratnik, Nataša Sukič etc), developing a critique that universalises the fight against neo-liberal capitalism and its devastation and segregation of basic human and citizen rights in Slovenia (erased people, the Roma).This is setting clear limits within rationalist and universalistic discourses in Slovenia.

It is time to draw a new genealogy of forces, actions, thoughts, politics, and experiences. It is time in the context of new Europe to include new strategies for understanding migrations and new forms of (forced)labour. It is time to strike back, subverting new forms of enslavement, marginalisation and expropriation.

Therefore we have to ask ourselves just where, in all these numerous historical outlines displayed on the Internet in hundreds of versions, the histories and the present of feminist, post/trans/feminist and cyber-feminist processes from the Second and Third Worlds are to be placed? The 1970s feminist movement in Belgrade and Zagreb at least shaped a process of radical and avant-garde emancipation, and is to be found (although very rarely) in countercultural historical digest readers' outlines, but cyber-feminist movements in Russia and Asia are still waiting to be included in the official (Western and White) history of feminism and cyber-feminism, not to mention the important perspectives on feminism and technology within African and African-American contexts. Thus, if feminism is opening up multiple inscriptions of social codes, it is time also it opens itself to multiple inscriptions of other worlds of feminism, queer and networking conditions (of politics and new media technology), outside of the only First Capitalist World.

New feminism is a term that tries, first, to break the simple continuity in the movement and, secondly, to revitalise the movement, giving visibility to new agencies and topics. What is new in the new feminism is the impact of precarity, migration and expropriation of the Third and Second World women by the first capitalist world. A new type of inequality arises between those inside the new Europe or Fortress Europe and those outside it, which forces women into unbelievable slavery. Part of this story is also the logic of institutionalisation of prostitution for example; with the institutionalisation of prostitution, which contributes, through taxes, to the overall capitalist profit, a process of simply normalizing slavery is taking place.

We have to open the productive field of lessened safety by asking questions within present contemporary feminist debates of who speaks and about what kind of race, class and sexuality issues. We cannot be safe at home/inside, if the outside is drowning in wars and states of emergency. To be safe, to retake the conditions of security in our hands, means not to take a neutral role in the present struggles.

Today as well the question of changing strategies in the field of art is of crucial importance, as art and culture are becoming important fields for the conceptualisation of feminist theories and radical political action. Artists cannot be only and solely feminists; this feminism must be present in the form of contemporary art. The possibility of resistance is located, to paraphrase Ziarek, in the rift between visible forms and forms of signification.

Direct social critique, in the sense of simply pointing the finger at questions of antagonism in art, is not enough. In the time of turbo spectacle when even Hollywood family films include hard-core sex, to be safe means to change strategy. Therefore feminism has to change the terrain of battle and contestation. In the past, feminism entered the kitchen; by the same token, today it has to enter the space of show business and economics, history and production of life and work, all cannibalised deeply by the global capitalism.

We will achieve security only by opening different possibilities for those living in dramatically unsafe and insecure everyday life conditions, without papers, social status and without work.

It is about emphasizing responsibility, as critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak would say, for questions of rights, history, race and sexuality. In her text French Feminism Revisited: Ethics and Politics, Gayatri Spivak insists that we should theorize the political and politicize the theoretical. I will say that this is a primal task within contemporary feminist theory, in order to restore its political significance. Doing this also implies taking racial, sexual and class differences among women deadly seriously.

Marina Grzinic has a Ph.D. in philosophy and works as a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the ZRC SAZU (Scientific and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art) in Ljubljana. She is also a freelance media theorist, art critic and curator. She is Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Her last book is Situated Contemporary Art Practice. Art and Activism from (the East of) Europe (Revolver, Frankfurt 2004). Together with Aina Smid, Grzinic is involved in video and media art from 1982.
http://grzinic-smid.si